In today's edition on female leaders in education and philanthropy, I have the great pleasure of sharing with you an exchange with my former colleague Gelgia Fetz Fernandes from the Jacobs Foundation.
Gelgia currently serves as the Global Lead Learning and Evidence at the Jacobs Foundation, a position she has held since September 2024. Her 18-year tenure at the Foundation includes roles as Co-Lead Learning Minds and Program Officer, where she worked to enhance collaboration and increase the influence of Jacobs Foundation-supported researchers on both practice and policy. She was instrumental in setting up the Jacobs Foundation’s Klaus J. Jacobs Awards, the Research Fellowship Program, and CRISP, as well as the LEAP program. Prior to joining the Jacobs Foundation in 2007, Gelgia has worked as a trained newspaper journalist, covering events and stories national and international in scope. In that role, she reported out of Tel Aviv where she finished her studies in Social Anthropology and focused on the political socialization of Israeli youth.
In this candid and insightful conversation, Gelgia shares her nearly two-decade journey at the Jacobs Foundation. The interview traces her evolution from studying adolescent development in Israel to becoming a pivotal figure at the intersection of research, policy, and practice in education. Gelgia offers thoughtful reflections on the concept of learning variability, how children learn differently across contexts, subjects, and time, and why education systems must adapt to these differences rather than expecting uniformity. She discusses the challenges of meaningful systems change, the critical role of cross-disciplinary partnerships, and the importance of evidence adoption in education policy. Throughout the conversation, Gelgia weaves in personal leadership lessons from her career journey, offering candid insights about gender dynamics in professional settings and valuable advice for women aspiring to leadership roles in the sector. Her perspective reveals both the practical challenges and inspiring possibilities in transforming education through evidence-informed approaches that respect the inherent variability in how children learn.
Thank you so much for the exchange dear Gelgia. First, I’d like to know more on how you came into education.
That seems like an eternity ago, almost 20 years. I was interested in adolescent development when studying social anthropology at the Zurich University. I spent a year in Tel Aviv investigating the political socialization of Israeli youth. Adolescence is fascinating because there's so much going on in that phase of life.
You can look at adolescents from a deficit perspective, their brains are under construction, their hormones are going crazy, their behavior is erratic, but at the same time there's so much potential. Adolescents are developing, exploring, going through a window of heightened brain plasticity. This specific phase in life, when so much is possible yet a lot can go wrong is what brought me to the Jacobs Foundation. At that time, it was focusing on adolescent development and what was called “productive youth development” - looking at young people from a strength perspective rather than a deficit one.
Over a decade later, the Foundation moved into the field of learning and education, away from youth development towards learning and education-related topics.
Now, could you explain what role you currently hold at the Jacobs Foundation and what this entails?
As “Global Lead Learning and Evidence” I am working at the intersection of global and country work. The Jacobs Foundation runs global programs and country programs. We have a global strategy with research programs and evidence generation at its core because supporting research and increasing the knowledge on learning and learning variability is global in nature and needs to happen internationally. My role is to connect this work and the insights we gain from it to the work we do in our target geographies, primarily Switzerland, one of our 4 target geographies.
How has your perspective on education and child development evolved since studying adolescents in Israel to your current focus on evidence generation, translation, and uptake? And how evidence can inform action and policy in countries and at the global level?
That's been quite a ride. When I joined the Foundation in 2007 it’s focus was on child and youth development. Learning came only in later into our current strategy (2020-2030).
At first, I thought this would be limiting us in our role as research funder pushing our work towards education research primarily. And I wasn't too excited about moving into the K-12 education sector. But then we decided to focus on learning variability, which caught my attention and which I find very interesting from a scientific perspective, but also from a practical standpoint because it’s so important in the world we live in.
Learning variability takes into account that children are not developing at the same time or pace, and are not learning in the same way. This concept refers to variance between kids, within a child, as well as contextual variability. One child might learn mathematics differently from languages, might learn better in the morning than in the afternoon, better in certain contexts than others. This variability is a given and it provides various opportunities and challenges for children to learn.
It's challenging because if you look at how kids are currently being taught in school, what you'd still encounter very often is an approach assuming all kids in a class are learning at a similar pace in a similar way. This is not taking into account variability, and we are interested in how we can change that to ensure all kids can reach their full potential - those are important and relevant questions that drive our work and motivate me personally.
Given your perspective on both international and country programs, I want to turn to that magic word everybody is using - systems change. There seems to be a need to do things differently, which involves a more sustainable long-term change in how education is done. What's in your view relevant for system change and how do you approach it at the Jacobs Foundation?
To be honest with you, the first time I I heard somebody talking about "systems change" or "systems change architecture," it made me cringe because it's so abstract.
But pragmatically speaking, for me it comes down to two things: First, if we're interested in learning variability and supporting kids to reach their full potential, we need to understand how kids learn, how they differ from each other, within each child, and how they learn in various contexts. This requires research and curiosity-driven investigation and that again in my view is most impactful when researchers are collaborating across scientific disciplines, because only then you get the full picture. An economist might tell you about program cost effectiveness, a neuroscientist about brain development, a psychologist about what is required to change behavior. Ultimately, many disciplines complete the picture. So for me, systems change requires taking a multidisciplinary approach to investigate and address the challenges at hand.
Second, if you want to see evidence not only be produced, but synthesized and translated, this again requires stakeholders working together, from academics, practitioners, and policymakers, looking at challenges together. As well as co-creating solutions from the very beginning, not just joining at the end of the evidence production and synthesis process when results and recommendations are supposed to be translated and implemented. Too often, we see evidence generation happen in isolation, and then practitioners and policymakers are expected to simply implement findings without having been part of the research process itself.
In sum, to me, systems change is fundamentally about multidisciplinary approaches and cross-sector collaboration. It's about creating environments where evidence can be generated, shared, and adopted in ways that acknowledge the complex realities of education systems.
That leads to my next question about the role of effective partnerships. What's your takeaway on setting up these partnerships so that they are sustainable? How can you achieve partnerships across sectors and disciplines when they speak different languages and have different incentives?
At times, partnership experiences have been frustrating and felt like arranged marriages. You bring people together who have never worked together, who may not even want to be together, and you ask them to work on something. In such a context, you need a knowledge broker, a mediator, a coach. That's our role, namely bringing together people who otherwise might not work together, providing guidance, coaching, time, and space to collaborate fruitfully.
As a Foundation I find it difficult to decide how prescriptive we want to be in setting up such collaborations. In Switzerland, where the education system is decentralized and decisions are taken at municipal or cantonal level and not top-down as in other contexts, you could lose yourself by consulting with stakeholders at various levels across 26 districts all day without making decisions about how things should happen.
Finding that middle ground is key, allowing bottom-up approaches where everyone feels heard and can buy in, while still moving things forward along the strategy outlined and within a reasonable timeframe in order to achieve impact. You need to balance being respectful of local contexts and stakeholder perspectives while ensuring progress can happen, adhere to the overall strategy, and deliver meaningful results.
Before we move toward your personal leadership approach, what's your vision for education systems you work with, both at country and global levels, from an evidence use perspective? What's your vision for the next 10 years?
Since evidence is at the heart of everything we do - we've been referenced as "the evidence foundation" - we need to think about the role of knowledge brokers bringing evidence into policy and practice.
There's a black box there, we don't know what needs to be in place for evidence adoption and uptake to happen. This goes well beyond the relevance of certain pieces of evidence, successful co-creation or evidence translation. At the Jacobs Foundation, we call these knowledge brokers "EdLabs", or evidence in education labs. Understanding what makes a knowledge broker or an EdLab efficient and effective is crucial, because evidence won't find its way into the system automatically.
Evidence typically only becomes relevant or of interest to decision makers when they are discussing costs and efficiency, or when it fits someone's agenda. This is something I observe repeatedly across contexts: evidence is cherry-picked to support pre-existing positions and views rather than genuinely informing decisions.
Even in high-resource contexts like Switzerland, I think we can do better and deal with learning heterogeneity and variability in a more productive way if we are taking an evidence-based approach We have a strong evidence base and high-quality data available, but we are still wasting potential. For example, I am not sure the current debates in education are evidence-informed. Personally, I don’t think we can allow ourselves to ignore available evidence on learning and teaching without compromising our innovation potential. This is a challenge I hope we can address in our work. Let's have this discussion again in 10 years and see where we stand!
Thank you Gelgia, I’d be curious to join you on this review! Now, moving more towards your journey as a leader in education philanthropy. You've worked for almost 20 years in the field and hold a leadership position within the Jacobs Foundation. How would you describe your leadership style and how has being a woman influenced that?
We've recently hired new colleagues who bring very strong technical skills which is exciting but requires a specific leadership approach.
It’s all about ensuring the people I work with have the right context to deliver results to their best ability. I need to provide the context these brilliant people need without telling them what to do, taking on more of a coaching role, which I find demanding but very rewarding.
I am expecting solid and quick results in an uncertain, fast-changing environment, but I don't want to be too prescriptive. Similar to working with partners, I want them to find their own ways of working while still guiding them. Finding that balance is interesting and challenging every day. Sometimes I feel I'm giving too much direction, other times not enough, it's a constant calibration.
As a woman, I find it particularly important to ensure my female colleagues can grow. I try to push them a little further than they'd feel comfortable with, because that's when you learn and grow, when you are just a little outside of your comfort zone. I see this as part of my responsibility, having navigated and worked in the sector for almost two decades now.
What would you recommend to young female aspirants or recent graduates entering the field and thinking about personal growth regarding leadership?
It's about finding the right balance. When I started my career, I was aiming to serve, please, and show that I was a hard worker. I wasn't thinking about my career but rather focusing on performance and delivering results, convinced that good work would automatically bring good things in my career.
As a young woman, that's not entirely true. Yes, you should work hard and prioritize delivering results, but you also have to think about your own career path. Finding the right balance is important, not being caught up driving your ego, but still having impact as your core objective rather than your own career. In my view, the strive for impact should come before anything else, especially in our sector.
But by being a hard worker and delivering good work alone, you can't expect your career to automatically progress. I've seen many talented women get overlooked simply because they weren't strategic about their careers or didn't advocate for themselves. Find that balance, push yourself, be bold, speak up, overcome your imposter syndrome, claim your space and find your voice. That's something I wish I'd heard 20 years ago, and what I tell my younger colleagues now.
I think women in particular need to hear this message because we're often socialized to be accommodating and to prioritize others' needs. But you can maintain your values, help and support others, and still be strategic about your professional development.
Were there any challenges you faced as a woman moving up to leadership in your career?
Not necessarily challenges that came about by context, but challenges that I created myself. For example, men tend to speak in every meeting multiple times, even if what they're saying isn't new, interesting, nor helpful. We women sit there and think, "yeah, right”, but we don’t say anything, we feel we have nothing to contribute to the discussion.
Now in my 40s, I have learned to speak up, to stop someone from dominating the conversation, and to make sure others get heard. I've learned to do this in ways that are assertive but not aggressive, which is a skill in itself. If I could go back 20 years in time and talk to my future self, I would say, be more assertive, be bold without being arrogant.
At times, the newer generation has a sense of entitlement and strong ambition, and sometimes you have to tell them to relax a little. I find this generational shift fascinating. My generation, particularly women, would have been better off being more pushy, more demanding, more assertive. Instead, we were taught to wait our turn, to be polite and accommodating, to not interrupt. However, in professional settings, especially male-dominated ones, that approach can lead you to become invisible and unheard.
Anything else you'd like to share before closing?
Leadership is tricky. There are many different leadership styles, and even more books where you can read about those styles. I still haven't figured out to what extent I should go with my gut feeling, and to what extent I can allow for variability in my leadership style.
I think what matters are the situations, the context, and the people you're leading. Some people are intrinsically motivated, passionate, and set no boundaries, then your role is to keep them from burning out, while others need a push. Different people and different situations require different approaches.
I've found that the most effective leaders I've worked with are those who can adapt depending on the circumstances and the individuals involved. It's not about finding a single approach or a single style that works for everything and everyone, but developing a repertoire of strategies, knowing when to apply those while remaining authentic.
We were talking about variability before, I think that concept is applicable here too: how to best adapt to various contexts in your leadership position. What we ask our kids early on possibly applies throughout life, that we constantly need to adapt ourselves.